Satan: A Son of God?The next appearance of Satan as a character in the Bible is in the book of Job. Now, Job is a very interesting book, as the genre is a little hard to place. One of the first things any critical reader will note about the book is that it begins with a prologue written in the style of prose, goes from there into a series of rather lengthy poetic narratives and monologues, and then finishes off with an epilogue written in narrative style. It is because of this structure that some scholars have surmised that perhaps Job was originally intended to be performed as an ancient play (see this link for one place that talks about this). This highly poetic style of Job and the possibility of the book being in the genre of a play should be considered for interpretive purposes - meaning that we ought to consider whether the appearance of Satan as a character in this book should be interpreted as factual or symbolic.

If that makes you nervous, consider the words of the Genesis Rabba, a Jewish midrashic text:

Job probably never existed, and if he did exist, the events recorded
concerning him never took place. The whole narrative is intended as a
moral lesson.

The point of Job is not what happened - story is far more powerful than that. The point of Job is to ponder Theodicy.The historical context of the book is of interest in the examination of the meaning of Job. The authorship of this book is unknown, but the most recent scholarship regarding the dating of this work puts it somewhere between the 7th and 4th centuries, B.C., with the 6th century being the most likely for a variety of reasons. That would make it probable that Job was written during the time of the Persian empire.

The symbol for Ahura Mazda

The context of the Persian empire is interesting for two reasons. First of all, the Persian empire during this time was the birthplace of the first truly dualistic religion - Zoroastrianism. Scholars also note the importance of Zoroastrianism in history as a movement of cultures from polytheism to monotheism. Zoroastrians believed that there is one, universal, transcendent, supreme deity of wisdom and uncreated creator who is the beginning and the end - Ahura Mazda. However, Ahura Mazda was not the creator of one particular thing - druj. The concept of druj is a bit nuanced, so it must be contrasted with its opposite - asha. Asha is the equitable laws/order of the universe, the observable reality, the course of all things. Druj contrasted this, and were the violations of this order and against creation, and thus were violations against Ahura Mazda. So druj is very similar to the concept of chaos.

Now, as I said before, Ahura Mazda did not create druj. And here’s where the true dualism comes from - rivaling Ahura Mazda was the evil spirit of chaos and destruction, Angra Mainyu (called Ahriman in the Zurvanite version of Zoroastrianism). Angra Mainyu was the evil twin brother of Ahura Mazda who dwelt in the darkness below, and all druj was attributed to him. This context is interesting to note, as I’m sure you will notice many parallels between the idea of this character and the shape that Satan took over time.

The second contextual clue that is important to the development of Satan in the book of Job is the history of Persia’s network of spies - the king employed these spies who would be called by the title of “Eye of the King”, “King’s Eye”, or “King’s Ear”. This network was somewhat similar to the USA’s FBI and CIA networks - these spies functioned as roving intelligence agents who would probe the colonies for disloyalty, and report back to the king as to the state of his empire. This should be a very interesting piece of context, as the book of Job may be drawing on this context to develop the character of Satan. This is not unheard of, as the Jewish Apocalyptic tradition of literature would often take familiar political, historical, and mythical images and creatively rework them to reveal truths to its audience.

Satan in the book of Job seems to be a combination of these two concepts - the King’s Eye and Angra Mainyu - acting as both an accusing intelligence officer and an agent of chaos. But Job puts a very interesting twist on these concepts. In Job 1:6 (NASB - which seems to match the YLT translation the closest), it says that “the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan (literally “ha satan” - “the accuser”) also came among them.” Did you catch that? Satan is numbered among the sons of God. It doesn’t say he snuck in. It doesn’t say he had to beat up some guards to get in. He just comes right on in with the rest of the sons of God. He is a fully credentialed member of God’s court in this passage - not a fallen angel of darkness, banished into the realms of the underworld.

In the passage that follows, his role resembles that of a District Attorney - most likely drawing on the role of the “King’s Eye”, which would have been quite familiar to Job’s audience. He’s performing a function of God’s government - a servant of God! The fault of Satan in this passage is not that he is pure evil, but more that he plays his role a little too well - he’s overzealous! You might even notice some similarity between this character and the Pharisees of Jesus’ time.

At this point, it almost seems as though we should stop calling this character “Satan”, and simply refer to him as “the Accuser” (it is, after all, the literal translation). The question I might pose would be along the lines of: is this character meant to be taken literally, and should we take the passages in Job where this character appears as proof that there is a supernatural being represented here? Or, does this character fulfill a literary function, similar to the way that Proverbs portrays “Wisdom” as a woman crying out in the streets? (See Proverbs 1:20 and 8:1.) Are we meant to take this as proof that there is a being named Satan (literally: the Accuser), or is this a plot device to get the ball rolling?

Moving on: as the plot develops, God says “have you considered my servant Job?” It seems that God and the Accuser have talked about him before. God regards Job as a unique case - "there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, fearing God and turning away from evil.” (Job 1:8) But the Accuser is not convinced - as we see in verses 9 through 11 - he believes that the only reason Job is this way is because Job has had a really nice life, filled with nice things and happy circumstances. The Accuser thinks that if God took away some of these blessings, Job would curse God - you can really see the “King’s Eye” role playing out here in a way that is a bit overachieving. It’s not enough that Job was blameless - the Accuser has to provethat he would not have been, if he had been tested with the right circumstances.

Now this deserves a bit more context, I think. I believe that one of the purposes of the book of Job was to critique, present tension for, and give nuance to another piece of Biblical literature known as the Deuteronomic code. The Deuteronomic code was a set of laws and standards that the Israelites were to live by, and it ends with Deuteronomy chapter 28, wherein the Israelites are told that if they follow this standard rigorously - carefully keeping every commandment within the previous chapters - God will bless them. Their cities will prosper, their wives will be hot and their children well-behaved, their crops will grow plentifully, people will sing their praises, they’ll get to meet all their favorite celebrities, they’ll own a Porsche, etc. But - the Israelites were told - if you don’t obey every law within this code, you will be cursed - people in the city and the country will curse you, your wife will be ugly and your children will be brats, your crops will wither up, your health will suffer, your car will break down on the highway, etc. (Ok, I’m putting this in more modern language - but this is the gist of it.)

Now, this code was quite onerous to many, as it was often used to justify oppressive rulers who lived in extravagant wealth - they’d point to everything they had and say “see? I must’ve done something good!” And to top it off, whenever someone got sick, or was born into poverty, or got hurt, or something along those lines, people who legalistically applied the Deuteronomic code would say that these people must have done something bad, and so they must deserve their troubles. In the beginning of John chapter 9 we see that people are still following the code of Deuteronomy 28 - Jesus and his disciples see a man born blind, and the disciples ask Jesus whether it was the blind man who sinned or his parents? Because if you live by the principle of Deuteronomy 28, it's logical to assume that this man was blind because he was being punished for sins, right?

Today, in America’s political landscape, this code is still applied! Many people like to assume that anyone who is “on welfare” must be lazy and irresponsible - the Deuteronomic code is alive and well!

But the book of Job functions as a critique of this code - Job is righteous, but bad things happen to him! Throughout the book, Job’s friends repeatedly insist that Job must have done something bad, and this is why bad things happened to him. But he repeatedly insists that he is blameless - and in the beginning God declared that Job was a righteous man as well! And in the end of the book, God rebukes Job’s friends, says they’ve misrepresented Him, and puts Job in charge of dealing with them “according to [their] folly” (see Job 42:7-8). So this functions almost as an overturning of the Deuteronomic code - or at least gives it a nuance that wasn’t noticed before. Because we see through this story that we can’t just assume that if someone follows all the rules, nothing bad will happen to them - nor can we assume that anyone who is going through a rough time must have done something bad to deserve it either!

Note also that in the story from John 9, Jesus also contradicts the Deuteronomic code, and says that neither the man nor his parents sinned and caused the man's blindness (see verse 3). In addition, we see this tension played out in other passages. For example: while Ex. 34:6-7 states that the Lord will "[visit] the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation", Deut 24:16 contradicts this and states that "parents shall not be put to death for their children, nor shall children be put to death for their parents", and Ezek. 18:20 also states that "a child shall not suffer for the iniquity of a parent, nor a parent suffer for the iniquity of a child".

Back to Job - the author is also playing a bit of a balancing act here. You see, while on the one hand he is rebuking those who applied Deuteronomy 28 legalistically, on the other hand he seems to be critiquing the views of the other side as well. You see, while on the one hand, many of the members of Job’s audience would have been Deuteronomy 28followers, on the other hand, there were most likely members of the audience who would have resentedDeuteronomy 28. And these audience members would have resented the rich, the rulers, the plutocrats, the land-owners, etc. These audience members might have felt a bit of pleasure when the Accuser said “put forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.” (See Job 1:11.) They may have even derived a bit of pleasure from all the tragedies that Job endured. And to this section of Job’s audience, there was also a rebuke - Job didn’t curse God, and so he was truly a righteous man!

This point is really drawn out in the second chapter of Job - the conversation between God and the Accuser is repeated almost word for word here, but God adds a little phrase in verse 3:

Have you considered My servant Job? For there is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man fearing God and turning away from evil. And he still holds fast his integrity, although you incited Me against him to ruin him without cause.

This verse is a word-for-word repeat of Job 1:8, except for the addition I’ve italicized above. And this was a common literary technique in Hebrew poetry - often, authors of Hebrew poetry would emphasize a point by repeating a phrase, but altering it just slightly enough to call attention to that alteration. In this case, the author of Job wants his audience to observe that Job really is blameless, and the Accuser had no cause whatsoever to test his loyalty to God. You might wonder if those audience members who resented the Deuteronomic code and wanted to see Job harmed might have been squirming in their seats at this point.

For this section of the audience, the book of Job delivers a bit of a gut punch by revealing that the character of Job actually cared about those who would have resented the Deuteronomic code - in Job 29:12-13, Job says:

I delivered the poor who cried for help,And the orphan who had no helper.The blessing of the one ready to perish came upon me,And I made the widow’s heart sing for joy.

So you can see that the author of Job is playing a delicate balancing game here - he’s contradicting the views of one section of his audience who held the Deuteronomic code a bit too legalistically, and at the same time he’s encouraging the other side of his audience to see the goodness in the character of Job.

With this context in mind, you can see how the character of the Accuser in Job is not a character of pure evil either - he is an overzealous member of God’s court who fulfills the role of District Attorney, and actually resembled Job’s audience in a number of ways.

But what might be even more interesting is that this character doesn’t take the blame for the tragedies that Job endures. All throughout the conversations between Job and his friends, “Satan” is never mentioned! In fact, when Job finally does question God about what’s happened to him, God doesn’t come out and say “hey dude - it wasn’t me! It was Satan!” God seems to take the blame here! Actually, if you were reading carefully, you would have noticed in the second chapter that the Accuser had no power to do anything! In verse 5 of this chapter, the Accuser says: “put forth Your hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh; he will curse You to Your face.”

Perhaps even more curious is that Satan completely disappears from the plot after performing the role of testing Job’s faith, and never makes a reappearance afterward! And even when Satan was a character, the audience still can’t tell who’s “to blame” for Job’s calamities - he has no power on his own, and has to ask God’s permission, and even has to ask God to do some of it Himself! It’s almost as if the author is saying “hey, this idea of dualism doesn’t really solve the problem! You still have the nagging question of why bad things happen anyways! Because even if there is an evil supernatural being who rivals God, he's still not in charge and can’t do anything without God’s permission - so can we really assign the blame to him? God still has to allow it - so you are still left asking why.”

One of my students, rather unintentionally, helped me make a little sense of this Jobian quandary. Granted, I don’t think it’s going to make me sleep any better at night, but it is worth considering. He said, “You know, it’s a scary thing to be one of God’s favorites. Not just for you, but, as we learned from this story, for your loved ones. It makes you a little nervous if your parents are righteous people.”It is true; the closer you are to God the more likely you are to experience a world of hurt. If you don’t believe me, first, stop listening to Joel Osteen, and, second, just ask Job, Abraham, Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Jonah, Hosea, the disciples, the martyrs, the majority of saints throughout Christian history, pretty much the entire history of the Jewish people and . . . it seems like I am forgetting someone . . . oh yeah, Jesus.“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”Because your Father loves you—and us—so much.It is one hell of a story.

So once again, I must ask - is “Satan” meant to be taken as a literal being, or is “he” just a plot device to get the plot rolling so that the audience can wrestle with the bigger questions that this book presents?

In the next section, we will examine the third, and final appearance of Satan in the Old Testament.

About Me

I am married to a gorgeous woman
who makes life beautiful. I have three children who are the loves of my
life. I am learning more about love every day. My family and I moved
to Chattanooga in December 2010 and are loving it! We've been attending
The Vineyard and are feeling like we are more a part of that church
than we have of any church in a long time. I am a music snob which
means that I hate any radio station that plays just hits resulting in
the same dozen or so songs repeated every hour. I reject the politics of persecution and oppose absolutist, demonizing rhetoric. I am a geek/nerd.

1 Corinthians 13:1-3 NLT

If
I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love
others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had
the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and
possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move
mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave
everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast
about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.